


Nothing You Dismay

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Female Character of Color, Bisexuality, Christmas, Christmas Dinner, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, Doubt, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Religion, Self-Doubt, Short & Sweet, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 10:58:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13270017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: Rosa Diaz asks some important questions at a Christmas Eve dinner. She maybe gets answer or two.





	Nothing You Dismay

**Author's Note:**

> Back in the 99, son! It's a little late but I wanted to do a little something for Christmas and I love all these guys so much.

Rosa Diaz nursed her mimosa and let her eyes drift across the room. Things felt weird, out of joint. It wasn't that the room wasn't perfectly lovely, or anything. The frustrated artist in her (she was sure that in some alternate dimension somewhere that Rosa Diaz was an interior decorator who really loved all the cop shows on CBS instead of a detective) appreciated the dark, warm symmetry of Captain Holt's antique mahogany table and chairs, black marble counter tops and burgundy tile. The glow added by a living room fireplace and how it caught on copper pans over the big, gas range only complemented the whole scene. House was, in her amateur but informed opinion, pretty dope.

Nor was the company what bugged her. From the Captain himself to Jake and Amy to Terry and Boyle, these were her friends. No, they were more than that, closer. Some people said that family was bound only by blood. Well, Charles had spilled that for her, hadn't he? And Captain Holt had damn near sold his soul. They were her familia, her real one, the one that counted. Even Hitchcock and Scully cause sometimes family could be a real pain in the ass.

Yeah, she admitted to herself and closed her eyes tight. Yeah. That's what felt so goddamn fucked up. Being dis-invited from family game night, well, that was no big deal. There were only so many rounds of Scrabble or Risk you could play anyway, right? Getting tossed from Christmas like a dishrag with mold growing on it, though... that shit hurt. Like, knife twisted in your guts hurt and that motherfucker kept. On. Twisting. She hadn't cried. Rosa Diaz did not cry but... she wasn't going to lie and say there hadn't been some leakage around her eyes, either.

“Hey! What's up?” She turned at the greeting and soft brush of fingers on her shoulder, marveled that she had not answered with an open hand strike. Must be getting soft, she thought, or just more upset than you even thought you were

Whatever the case she was glad she hadn't lashed out. She offered Amy a smile. “'Sup, chica. How are you enjoying this little shindig?”

“It's great!” She beamed. “Isn't Captain Holt's house so refined? So... Captain Holt?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It's great. Decorated in later American nerd.”

Amy frowned, perhaps unsure for an instant whether this was an actual movement in American décor or not. Finally she giggled and said, “I like it.”

“Well, they are your people,” Rosa said. “I like it to. And your sweater... uh...” Rosa searched for something nice to say about the light up, hugging reindeer. “It's bright.”

“That's what Jake's mom said. She has one just like it. Apparently she used to tell Jake that she was gonna use the lights to guide Santa's sleigh in. The torch has been passed to me.”

“Jake's over thirty years old,” Rosa said. “He still believes in...”

“Er, I can't tell if he's joking or just, you know... Jake,” Amy said. “Better safe than sorry, right? I'd hate to ruin his Christmas.”

She smiled. “Better safe than sorry.”

“So, uh...” Amy fumbled uncomfortably for a moment. “Where's Tiffany?”

“At her grandparents'. Her mom and dad have been pretty cdool but they haven't, you know, gotten woke to the whole thing yet. We're gonna see them together tomorrow, while she sees her grandma tonight.”

Amy nodded. “And I thought I had it rough wrangling mine and Jake's dads.” She reaches out and gives Rosa's shoulder a squeeze. “Even with all the crappy parts I'm glad you've got this, though. You've been flashing the hugest smile around the precinct.”

The left corner of Rosa's lips raised less than a millimeter. “Huge smile, huh?”

“Yep,” Amy says. “That's the one!” She offers another brief touch, and there is something so sweet about casual, intimate touch, and hurries over to make season's greetings with Terry.

So yeah... that took away a little bit of the sting. Not a lot, maybe. The knife's still in her guts and it still hurts like hell but it's not just doing flip-flops down there anymore. There's more to this, though. There has to be. She'd known forever that her parents were kinda... intense. Ever since she dyed the magenta skunk stripe in her hair and turned down a career in ballet for biker jackets and Venom records. Yeah... fourteen was one hell of a year. Something digs at her, digs deeper even than her mom's dark, disapproving eyes. Maybe it'll come.

She found Captain Holt preparing to carve an honest to Aquabuddha Christmas goose. He nodded to her. “Detective Diaz, you appear fit this evening.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Shall I leave aside a slab of breast for you, or perhaps a drumstick?”

“Anything will be fine.”

“Are you sure?” he said. “This is the time to make your preferences known, before Hitchcock and Scully see this magnificent bird.” His eyes grew narrow. “They will descend like the bastard sons of a jackal and a vulture and with them all hell shall come in a plague of locusts.”

“Er... maybe just a wing, then,” she said. “A wing would be good.”

“A wing then indeed,” he said. “Will that be all, Detective?”

“Sure.” Something grows in her. It's hot, raw and must spill out. “I have a question, sir.”

“I shall endeavor to answer it.”

“Do you believe in God, sir?”

He pause dto dab at his brow with a handkerchief monogrammed R&K. “That is a complex question that begs an equally complex answer. I could take some time.”

“I've got nothing else, sir,” she said. “I mean, until the locusts come.”

“The locusts indeed.” He drew a deep breath. “Very well, then. Would you like to sit? I believe that Kevin can handle this goose from here.”

He handed the knife to his husband and they retired to his private study. Amy, Rosa reflects, would be close to exploding from the sheer glee of being in here. It's nice, she thought, and smells exactly like an episode of Frasier would smell. He sat, legs crossed, and considered his answer over a snifter of cognac. 

“I was born and raised,” he said, “in the bosom of the African-American Missionary Baptist experience. It is a fine institution and many fine people are a part of it—my mother and her mother before her included. It indeed formed much of the man I am today. The most important lesson I learned, among all those I absorbed as a child memorizing Bible verses and making macaroni art, was that from great hardship an equally great, dignified beauty can arise.”

He paused to sip before going on. “As I grew older and more aware of myself I also learned, to my sorrow, that many of these I so loved considered me an abomination.” He smiled. It was only a trifle bitter. “I learned the lessons of Mary Shelley from the point of view of her post-modern Prometheus, you might say. My lesson, like that of Frankenstein's monster, lead to many years where I wandered in a dark, vaguely atheist wasteland. I was more apathetic, perhaps, or angry, but its end result was the same.”

“Finally, one evening after my father grew ill with what would eventually take his life, I realized something... what madman feels anger for something that does not exist? If this being that I was taught of as a child was in no wise true, then what did I feel such an unholy rage burning towards?”

“The people at your former church, maybe, or maybe the way you had been treated?” Rosa said. “Just a thought.”

“It crossed my mind,” he said, “and still does. But something else seemed to be there, something that gnawed at me. I wrestled with it for a long time, over a decade, and still have not satisfied myself. I am in a place of peace, though. Although I am in nowise a Christian, at least as most Christians understand the term, I do believe that there is a higher power in the universe, something beyond man.” He stroked his chin. “I have considered that it might be a statistically based deity. Statistics are...” He drew a deep sigh. “They are panentheistic rapture, Detective.”

She nodded, a little lost but unwilling to interrupt. Finally she said, “So... I guess I have a lot of thinking to do.”

“There are worse things to do with your time,” he said. “And I would suggest meditation, maybe even a little prayer. If someone answers, talk with them. If not...” He shrugged. “If not then rest easy in the silence for now.”

“Yes sir,” she said. “Thank you for this, sir. For talking with me.”

He waves a hand. “Think nothing of it. And Detective?”

“Sir?”

He raises the glass to her. “Let nothing you dismay on this Christmas Eve.”

“You too, sir,” she said, “and thank you again.” She took her leave to find a quiet place, even a lonely one, to put forth her questions. She did not know what answers, if any, might be forthcoming but felt that this might bring, if not comfort and joy, at least a little sliver of the truth.


End file.
